The ranks of obese Americans are expected to swell even further in the coming years, rising from 36% of the adult population today to 42% by 2030, experts said Monday. Kicking off a government-led conference on the public health ramifications of all those expanding waistlines, the authors of a new report estimated that the cost of treating those additional obese people for diabetes, heart disease and... (read more)
Active video games are often touted as ways to help kids be more physically active—but don’t toss the basketball and jump rope just yet. A study finds that having active video games in the home may not translate into more exercise. The study, released Monday in the journal Pediatrics, tested video games among 78 children ages 9 to 12 with a body mass index between the 50th and the 99th perce... (read more)
British health regulators said Tuesday that patients in Britain who received a specific type of all-metal artificial hip — one that was also used widely in the United States — should undergo annual examinations for as long as they have the device to make sure they are not suffering tissue damage or other problems. Previously, regulators in Britain urged that patients with “metal-on-metal” hips — in w... (read more)
A UCLA-led group of researchers tracing disparities in life expectancy between blacks and whites in the U.S. has found that white males live about seven years longer on average than African American men and that white women live more than five years longer than their black counterparts. But when comparing life expectancy on a state-by-state basis, the researchers made a surprising disc... (read more)
Breathing in dirty air may be linked to a higher chance of suffering a heart attack in the next few days, suggests a fresh look at past studies undertaken by French researchers. While it's well established that people who spend years living in polluted cities or near major highways are at increased risk of heart problems, the new findings suggest even short-term exposure to pollution can be harmful. "... (read more)
Breathing in particulate matter, even at levels deemed safe by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards, may raise the risk for acute ischemic stroke and for cognitive decline, 2 new studies suggest. In an accompanying commentary, Rajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH, from the San Francisco Department of Public Health in California, notes that the reported association between ambient fine particulate matter, d... (read more)
Facebook, Twitter and email could be more addicting than alcohol or smoking, a new study suggests. Researchers at the University of Chicago used Blackberrys and measured the willpower of 205 people ages 18 to 85 in and around the German city of Würtzburg. They wanted to measure how well people could resist their desires. They found that while the urge for sex or sleep is stronger, people were more likely to giv... (read more)
Cells trying to keep pace with constantly changing environmental conditions need to strike a fine balance between maintaining their genomic integrity and allowing enough genetic flexibility to adapt to inhospitable conditions. In their latest study, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research were able to show that under stressful conditions yeast genomes become unstable, readily acquiring or lo... (read more)
Many church-affiliated institutions will have to cover free birth control for employees, the Obama administration announced Friday in an election-year move that outraged religious groups, fueling a national debate about the reach of government. In a concession, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said nonprofit institutions such as church-affiliated hospitals, colleges and s... (read more)
People who wear headphones might want to ditch them while walking outside. A study finds that accidents involving pedestrians wearing the devices have tripled in recent years. Researchers combed several sources to find incidents in the U.S. of crashes involving pedestrians and vehicles between 2004 and 2011. Searching the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, the U.S. Consumer Pr... (read more)
It’s one of the more puzzling ironies of exercise — tragic news of people dying during or after completing a marathon. In 2009, four runners died during half-marathons in San Jose, Cal. and Detroit, and last year, two runners died at the Philadelphia Marathon, one at the finish line and another about a quarter-mile from completing the race, all from apparent sudden heart attacks. Isn’t running supposed to improve your fit... (read more)
Find prostate cancer early, save a life. That message has been pervasive since 1986, when a blood test for prostate cancer first hit the market. But more evidence suggests that, in many or even most cases, the message is wrong. The latest blow against prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing came Friday from a large, long-term study that found routine testing in men ages 55 to 74 did not preve... (read more)
Hospital employees recognize and report only one out of seven errors, accidents and other events that harm Medicare patients while they are hospitalized, federal investigators say in a new report. Yet even after hospitals investigate preventable injuries and infections that have been reported, they rarely change their practices to prevent repetition of the “adverse events,” according to the study, from ... (read more)
Adults who get their first cat double their risk of cat allergy -- especially if the cat is allowed in the bedroom. But adults who had cats as kids are less likely to become allergic to their new feline pets, a large European study finds. An adult's risk of developing a new cat allergy over a nine-year period "was nearly doubled in those acquiring a cat," report Mario Olivieri, MD, of the University... (read more)
Fecal contamination of public beaches caused by sewage overflow is both dangerous for swimmers and costly for state and local economies. Current methods to detect Escherichia coli, a bacterium highly indicative of the presence of fecal matter in water, typically require 24-48 hours to produce a result. A new, accurate, and economical sensor-based device capable of measuring E. coli levels in water samples in... (read more)
Using Twitter, a team of scientists from the University of Vermont has created a happiness graph, which shows happiness has fallen over the last few years. “After a gradual upward trend that ran from January to April 2009, the overall time series has shown a gradual downward trend, accelerating somewhat over the first half of 2011,” the researchers write in the Dec. 7 issue of the journal PLoS ONE. “... (read more)
Legalising same-sex marriage may create a healthier environment for gay men, say US researchers. The number of visits by gay men to health clinics dropped significantly after same-sex unions were allowed in the state Massachusetts. This was regardless of whether the men were in a stable relationship, reported the American Journal of Public Health. A UK HIV charity said there was a clear link between happiness and health... (read more)
Ritalin, Adderall and other drugs widely used to treat attention disorders didn't increase the risk of serious heart problems in a major study published Monday that could help ease concerns about the heart-related safety of the medicines. The findings, from an analysis involving nearly 500,000 adults, come on the heels of a separate study that reached a similar conclusion about the medications' effect in 1.2... (read more)
Drugs that affect the levels of an important brain protein involved in learning and memory reverse cellular changes in the brain seen during aging, according to an animal study in the December 7 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings could one day aid in the development of new drugs that enhance cognitive function in older adults. Aging-related memory loss is associated ... (read more)
Health disparities among young American adults born after 1980 have grown substantially, according to a new study led by Hui Zheng, assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University, that is published in the December issue of the American Sociological Review. Zheng and colleagues also found that the gaps tend to widen as people reach middle age, and then narrow again as they reach old age. T... (read more)
In a summer with unprecedented weather events, from tornados, floods, fires and hurricanes, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing found that physiological changes associated with aging and the presence of chronic illness make older adults more susceptible to illness or injury, even death, during a disaster. Investigators followed 17 long-term care residents, wi... (read more)
A recent report in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, suggests that a new treatment may be on the horizon for neuroendocrine prostate cancers, the most lethal subtype of this disease. Mark Rubin, M.D., professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, said although fewer than 2 percent of men with prostate canc... (read more)
The researchers studying a degenerative brain disease in former athletes plan to test about 100 retired NFL players to try to learn how to diagnose the condition during life. For now, the only way to confirm Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is by examining brains after death. The Boston University center that has analyzed the brains of more than 70 former athletes is starting a three-year study of living pat... (read more)
Women who don’t get enough vitamin D, found in sunshine, fish and fortified foods including milk and orange juice, have a higher chance of heart failure and stroke than those with sufficient amounts, a Danish study found. Researchers observed 2,016 healthy women ages 45 to 58 for 16 years, characterizing low vitamin D as levels less than 20 nanograms per milliliter. Of the women with the defici... (read more)
Women are a lot more likely to suffer a broken heart than men, researchers say. The good news is that it probably won't kill you. In the first national study of its kind, researchers at the University of Arkansas looked at rates of "broken heart syndrome" — when a sudden shock or prolonged stress causes heart attack-like symptoms or heart failure — and found that it overwhelmingly affects women. ... (read more)
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